Arctic-boreal regions are exhibiting the symptoms of profound ecological shifts as they experience pronounced warming. Wildlife in high-latitudes are one such harbinger of change, and their populations are undergoing range-shifts, declines, and extinctions in response to their rapidly altering habitats. As the circumpolar and boreal north is snow-covered for up...
The global cryosphere, defined as the world’s ice and snow covered regions, is a crucial water source for society and ecosystem functions, as well as an important regulator of the earth’s energy budget. Melt from glaciers and seasonal snow cover provides water for more than a sixth of the world’s...
Forested, mountain landscapes in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) are changing at an unprecedented rate, largely due to shifts in the regional climate regime. Documented climatic trends across the PNW include increasing wildfire frequency and intensity and an increasingly ephemeral snowpack, especially at moderate elevations. One relationship that has yet to...
The western United States is experiencing significant changes in wildfire and snow regimes as a result of warming temperatures. An amplification of wildfire activity and reduction in snow water equivalent, snow covered area, and earlier spring snowmelt are documented trends that are projected to continue into the future. With an...
Reservoir systems in the western US are managed to serve two main competing purposes: to reduce flooding during the winter and spring, and to provide water supply for multiple uses during the summer. Because the storage capacity of a reservoir cannot be used for both flood damage reduction and water...
Snow is a critical component of global climate regulation and provides water resources to over one billion people worldwide. Yet current measurement methods and modeling techniques lack the ability to fully capture snow characteristics such as snow water equivalent (SWE), snow depth, and density variable landscapes. In recent years, the...
Municipal watersheds attempt to balance growing and conflicting demands for water for human use and for ecosystems. The Mill Creek basin, a 295 km2 basin in southeast Washington, exemplifies these conflicts. Since the late 1800s, the City of Walla Walla has withdrawn water from Mill Creek for municipal use. However,...
We live on an Urban Planet. The current unprecedented urbanization is accompanied by intensive land cover transition and demographic shifts from rural to urban livelihoods. Cities serve as cultural, economic, political centers that facilitate wealth creation and innovation of the society, sustaining human from multi-dimensions with large ecological footprints far...
Seasonal mountain snowpack of the western US (WUS) is a key water resource to millions of people. Impurities at the snow surface directly affect snowmelt timing and rate, as they contribute to earlier peak streamflow, snow disappearance, and less water availability in dry months. Predicting the locations, timing, and intensity...
In this thesis I present the results of a comprehensive assessment of the Pacific-North American (PNA) teleconnection pattern in general circulation models (GCMs) and a regional climate model (RCM). The PNA teleconnection pattern is a quasi-stationary wave field over the North Pacific and North America that has long been recognized...